I own nothing relating to any series, including Harry Potter.

Past Mistakes

Chapter 1

Harry sat silently in front of the Veil of Death, his right thumb rubbing against the Hallow that adorned the restored ring of the Gaunts. It was strange. The voices that once poured from the Veil, that had distracted him and beckoned him to join were gone. Perhaps they knew he would be joining them soon.

Harry wasn't suicidal, at least not in the traditional sense. He just didn't see the point of going on when everyone he had ever loved or cared about had either killed themselves or been murdered. He didn't have an urge to harm or kill himself, but he wasn't about to sit around and find something to do with his life now that he had no one to do it with.

He cared for very few people in his life. Hedwig had been the first, before her death. Ron had been next, though his care only lasted for a few weeks until his actions nearly caused Hermione to die. Hermione was, quite clearly, the very next person he cared about.

A faint smile graced his tired face as he thought of Hermione. She might've done a few things to upset him during their time at Hogwarts but she had never stopped supporting him or trying to help. Had she not been gay, he would've tried to marry her after the war. It didn't stop him from loving her, it just meant their love wasn't of the romantic variety.

The next person Harry learned to care for had been Sirius. Despite the 'escaped convict' leaving him to his relatives for ten years, he had tried time and time again to make it up to him and that had been more than a little heartwarming. Like Hermione, Sirius actually seemed to care about him rather than his status or his role on a chessboard. Remus couldn't say the same, hating himself too much to feel any sort of real care for anybody.

Fleur was next, and her younger sister Gabrielle, the two worming their way into his heart despite how the elder sister originally treated him. Other than Hermione, those two were the only ones that actually seemed to care that he had three years less experience than them and he was completely unprepared. He wasn't, he was far from as stupid as people expected of him, and after Voldemort's assault in his first year, he had buckled down and spent hours upon hours after classes and on weekends in the library, preparing himself for another confrontation.

Before Neville had found the Room of Requirement, Harry had used old classrooms to practice what he had learned from the books, starting with just being capable of casting the spells before he learned how to ignore wand movement and then performing silent casting. By third year, he had finished up to the standard seventh-year spells and started on some of the more difficult books in the restricted section. As a fourth year, he was more than capable of matching the other champions and with what he experienced, he was also more than capable of blowing them out of the water.

Of course, Fleur had been an utter bitch at first, thinking he was a nosy cheater that had gotten an older student to put his name in. After the second task, however, in which he saved Hermione, Gabrielle and Ron after the other champions didn't show up in time, she changed her mind about him. And that was one kiss he'd never forget.

He had been merciless when the merpeople had tried to keep the hostages, killing what had apparently been the ambassador. The water had stirred restlessly around him as he prepared to kill quite a few more before their monarch had come and personally negotiated a deal. As long as neither Harry or Gabrielle touched their waters again, any depth in the lake enough to cover their heads with their feet on the ground, they would be free to go. If they went against their word, they would be killed on the spot.

It was better than the alternative, being killed for trying to defend innocent people from an unjust death. He never told Hermione how close she had come to dying and Ron didn't need to know. He had told the older Delacours, but Gabi was a bit too young to know such things. At least in his opinion.

After the second task, Fleur and Gabi practiced and studied with him. However, Gabi mostly helped him learn French whereas Fleur helped him learn control over his magic. As veela, they had to learn control just so their allure wasn't constantly spilling out and affecting anybody and everybody around them, so her teaching him how to control his magic the way they did theirs was a godsend. He got it to the point where even the two of them could mistake him for a muggle, though their mother and grandmother could still tell.

That Harry was downright immune to their allure was a godsend for them, allowing them to let their reins slip so they could relax. Even Apolline had delighted in a time to relax, gleeful that they had found and befriended him. She had almost written up betrothal contracts for all of them right then and there before he had been able to argue her out of it. He had, however, relented to a few dates with Fleur in Hogsmeade, and a week in France in the middle of summer.

He was more than a little hurt when she had gotten engaged to Bill Weasley but he put on a happy smile for how happy she seemed with him. His response when he had found out that she had been dosed with love potions had been cataclysmic. Bill didn't survive the hour. It had been too late, however. Fleur had killed herself in the time it took to find the man and kill him. He had regretted leaving her alone since and the terrible feeling just compounded upon itself when he learned she had been pregnant at the time.

Nymphadora Tonks had been the very next person, shortly after he had returned from France with Sirius after his fourth year at Hogwarts. No one but Hermione knew they had left. Everyone thought Harry had been trapped at Dursleys until the dementor attack and, though he had been attacked by dementors, Sirius had been the one to cast the patronus that warded them off. It was a good lesson in learning that the trace wasn't real, even as the Ministry had tried desperately to expel him.

He had met Tonks when they had arrived to 'rescue' him, the perky, outgoing woman being the most sociable person he had ever met and definitely one of the friendliest. Just a week together and Harry had grown to love the metamorphmagus. She wasn't afraid to flaunt what she had… when she wanted to, at least. She would do it to make people laugh or for work, but Merlin forbid you ask her to change for any other reason or she'd attempt to rip your tongue out of your mouth, mince it in a blender and force you to drink it. She was definitely terrifying when she had to be, and she was raised as a Black despite not being magically related to the Blacks. At least until he had fixed that when he had turned seventeen.

She certainly deserve better than the depressing fuck that was Remus and, though he was happy for her, he had been tempted to tear Remus several new holes for what he put her through. He had ended up punching the werewolf several times for leaving a very pregnant Tonks alone, ruining what little bit of relationship he had with the man.

Luna Lovegood had been next. She was a spectacular little fireball, unpredictable like a spring storm and as gentle as a summer breeze. He hadn't even known her the full year but, during the day before the Ministry break in, the two of them had lost their virginity to each other.

They hadn't quite fallen in love, at least not in the same way he had with Hermione or Fleur, but Luna gave him a sense of comfort that they hadn't. He loved Luna, clearly, but he didn't feel like he was in love with her.

He had been torn up to learn that she had died during her sixth year at Hogwarts, when he was out searching for Voldemort's horcruxes with Hermione. It was only several years after the fact that he learned it had been Ginny and not the Carrow twins that had killed her. Ginny herself had died during the final confrontation against Voldemort and his Death Eaters, an organ dissolving from Bellatrix spelling her demise.

He didn't care that the Weasleys declared a blood feud against him after he had burned her grave with fiendfyre, he just hoped Ginny was in agony as he did it.

Hermione had been a similar case to Fleur. But Harry knew that she was gay beforehand, he should've known something had been going on when she had kissed Ron Weasley of all people. He had been grieving about Luna and Tonks, sure, but it was no excuse for not noticing her unnatural behavior. By some miracle, she didn't blame him, but he certainly blamed himself.

Unlike Fleur, she hadn't killed herself while she was pregnant. She had given birth to her son, Alexander Sirius Granger, and died in childbirth. He was just glad Andromeda Tonks had taken Alex in for a few days as he wallowed in agony.

She slapped him out of it, quite literally, so he could help raise her grandson and his godson, Edward Remus Tonks along with Alex, his other godson. Being children of the people he loved more than life, they were easily accepted into his life and, though they hadn't been his genetically, they were his.

A few years after Voldemort's final demise, Harry had to save a young girl, Delphini, from Ministry prosecution and the public screaming bloody murder. Though he hated Voldemort and everything he stood for and the fact she was his and Bellatrix's daughter, she was an innocent four year old. No one, no matter what, deserved that kind of hate at such a young age.

Harry clenched his hand tight. She would've been eleven this year, just a few months away from Hogwarts.

It had been three years since the last people he had cared for had been killed. He sat alone in the world, nothing left of him but anguish, hatred and rage. And even that had faded away until he was left with nothing but his end goal.

Andromeda had gone shopping with the kids in Diagon Alley when a mob had ganged up on them and had quite literally torn Delphini apart simply because of her parentage. In their frenzied haze, they had killed Andromeda, Alex and Teddy along with her.

He had tried for two weeks to get the Ministry to take any sort of action against them. He had wanted to do it the legal way since they were no longer at war but they had denied him time after. And so he snapped. But he was patient. He waited two months for a full Wizenmagot session before he had announced, in full view of all of them, that Britain had a new Dark Lord.

They were scared, understandably. They had just gotten free of the Second Blood war and it was expected to take another twenty years before everything recovered from before the second war, and longer to recover entirely from the first.

He didn't answer when they asked him who and how he knew. Instead, he had just grinned and raised the Elder Wand, summoning fiendfyre and burning the Ministry to the ground. There were very few people that had been in the Ministry and had survived his initial assault. He had spent most of his last years hunting down the people that had killed his loved ones and their families. Magical Britain was in a state of turmoil, at least until he turned his attention onto them.

To him, it was the sheep that had allowed the corruption to continue growing that had been the biggest problem. After he had finished killing the people that had wronged him and his loved ones, he struck hard.

His first target was Hogwarts, knowing Minerva would reform the Order of the Phoenix to combat him. It also sent a strong message to the public. He wouldn't care if they were once an ally or neutral, he was out for blood and there was no one he was going to spare.

The only survivors were because he let them survive, to spread the fear of him. He had out-dueled all of the staff at once, his wand moving to counter their spells before they were even cast and turn their spells back on them if they were successful.

Their biggest flaw was that they were specialized, too specialized. Minerva relied too much on her transfiguration, Filius on his charms, whoever was their DADA teacher on trying to counter him. It had worked for all of three seconds before he started to use spells that were so obscure that even Dumbledore and Voldemort would've given up trying to find the barest mentions of them. Mostly because they were spells he had created.

The teachers thought themselves safe behind the wards of Hogwarts, until he had torn them down with a single spell. Before any students could escape, he put up a dark variant of the anti-apparition and anti-portkey wards. Anyone that tried to escape, except for by foot, would be ground into a bloody pulp and dumped in the courtyard.

Most of the seventh years had tried, as did the DADA teacher. Killing the remaining teachers barely took half an hour. He didn't even enter the Great Hall, where the majority of the students and the remaining staff were.

He cast a spell of his own design, one that would not harm anything that wasn't at least once alive. Flesh, blood, bones and everything in between were reduced to less than ash from the silver flames.

Now though? There were no more than twenty magical people in all of Britain and he had cursed them to age so rapidly that they would age to death by the end of the week. The people who had escaped from the British Isles had long since been hunted down, now he was just waiting for the last of them to pass away before he walked through the Veil. It would just be a few hours more and he would finally be with everyone he ever loved and cared for.

He had been sitting at the Veil, patiently waiting for the last remaining people to die, for nearly three days now. He hadn't slept and only ate and drank the bare minimum to remain alive. When the last life had finally perished, having had to wait another six hours on the third day, Harry stood, dusted himself off, and walked straight through the Veil.

~Z~

If Harry was honest with himself, he was expecting to wake up in Limbo again. If he was sent to eternal torment, so be it. He was expecting it anyway, his life had just been one shit show after another. It often felt as if his life was planned out to be a miserable experience if he ever felt the slightest bit happy.

He was not expecting to wake up under a familiar, itchy coat to the sound of snoring deep enough to feel it in his very bones. It was very familiar, enough to bring him out of his groggy state of mind and sit up, emerald eyes gazing across the room. Seeing the room blurry, he frowned. His vision had repaired itself after the magical bindings were removed from him during his first visit to the hospital wing in Hogwarts.

He squinted and groped around on the ground for a moment, searching for glasses. He found them after a second, pulling them on. While they helped, they weren't perfect. Petunia bought them from a garage sale after a teacher had commented on his poor sight.

A quick glance around saw a strangely familiar rundown shack. But it was Hagrid that caught his attention, the half giant sleeping soundly on a couch that could barely support his weight. Which should've been impossible. He had killed Hagrid, giving the friendly half-giant a gentle, painless death.

He could've let Hagrid be but he couldn't risk Hagrid, unlikely as it was, rallying some forces or rallying behind some forces and fighting him. Hagrid was a kind soul and didn't deserve to see the monster he turned into.

His eyes turned cold as he looked across the room again. He tasted the salty air and ran his fingers across the dusty, cracked cement ground. Even the way the wood creaked and groaned with the wind felt right. It didn't seem like a dream, he was far too lucid for that and he never tried controlling his dreams like being an occlumens was supposed to provide him the ability to do. And it certainly wasn't like one of his normal nightmares. Even the urge to pee felt the same, though that was the same most nights.

It was still early, the owl that he remembered waking him up hadn't arrived yet. By the barest hint of light he saw outside, he guessed it was about six AM, maybe six-thirty. Owls didn't start to arrive for another two hours at the most, and shops wouldn't open for an hour.

Deciding to ignore Hagrid for the moment, he stood from the cold, hard floor, wincing at the stiffness in his body, the same stiffness that he remembered from sleeping on a stone ground. Of course, the shack on the tiny island was far from the last time he slept on hard ground, so that wasn't conclusive proof.

Taking a moment to stretch, he noticed he was definitely shorter. He had never been the tallest out of the people he knew, it wasn't until he was sixteen that he was taller than Hermione, and he was still a few inches shorter than the next person his age. However, even he noticed he was missing over a foot in height.

It didn't feel like transfiguration and he didn't know anyone alive that would have a vendetta against him. Dead, sure, but it wasn't like a ghost could do much of anything but make him feel a bit of dread, which he had been feeling for years, and make it feel like he had been dunked in a pool of cold water. To say it wasn't much of a threatening experience was an understatement.

He made his way outside after relieving himself in the water jug Vernon had bought. It had a slight yellow color now but it was virtually unnoticeable in the little bit of light that filtered through the shack. A bit of petty vengeance if this was the past, which it seemed like it was so far, but he wasn't entirely convinced.

He silently apparated away once he was outside of Hagrid's field of vision. The lack of wards around the shack was telling, but less telling than the Leaky Cauldron being intact. The only thing that he had left of the shitty pub was the wards that hid the husk he had turned it into.

The pub always had its doors unlocked for those that lived in the muggle world to pass through. It was stupid. It could have been just as easily an alleyway, but he knew how much Tom paid in bribes to get that little bit of extra cash running through his shop.

After slipping through the pub - he was half tempted to set it on fire but decided against it for the moment - he flexed his magic and activated the gateway to the alley. The lack of destruction to the alley was telling, not a single sign of his work to the popular shopping district.

Pursing his lips, he left Diagon Alley and apparated to one more location. The mangled household of the Weasleys was standing tall. While an impressive feat of magic, it looked as horrid as the day he first saw it, back when he thought Ron had been a friend. He'd definitely have to burn that place down again, the sooner the better.

A plan was already forming in his mind about what to do, things to change. He wasn't entirely convinced that he was in the past, it could've been a delusion his mind made for walking through the Veil, or it could be Hell or some other crazy thing. He would reserve judgment for the time being, but keep a skeptic eye out.

If he really had another chance at life, then he could fix so very much. He could get rid of Voldemort before he rose, he could get rid of the Death Eaters and Neo Death Eaters. Hell, he could get rid of the conservative faction entirely, remove the racist, condescending bastards. It would mean Alex and Delphini wouldn't be born but that was something he would have to live with. He wasn't going to let Ron force himself on Hermione and getting rid of Voldemort before he rose again was a top priority.

He apparated back to the terrible little cottage not even thirty minutes after he left. Hagrid was still deep asleep, so he rummaged through Hagrid's coat, pulling out a few knuts to pay the owl when it arrived, as well as pulling out the sausages Hagrid made last time.

Grabbing Hagrid's little pink umbrella, he experimentally channeled his magic through it before being disgusted by the response he got. It wasn't quite unworkable, but it was a miracle Hagrid was able to do simple magic with it. That was something that took master levels of control and focus, something he didn't know Hagrid could do quite as well as the next person. But it made sense, considering how many magical animals he took care of, most of them sensitive in some way.

Which reminded him, he needed to take care of the acromantula colony. Having one or two dozen in a colony wasn't uncommon and not entirely dangerous, but the several thousand that resided in the Forbidden Forest was a danger to even Dumbledore at his peak.

It took him a couple tries to get enough of a spark out of the umbrella to light a fire in the fireplace and he returned the umbrella to where he stole it from.

A few minutes later, the sausages were heated up, the owl was knocking at the window and Hagrid was stirring.

Setting the sausages next to Hagrid and stealing one for himself, he let the owl in, paying it for the paper and offering it bits of sausage. A smile crossed his face as the owl took the sausages, reminding him of Hedwig when he gave her bits of bacon. The thought of his friend made him smile again. She cared for him enough to take a killing curse and the possibility of seeing her again was… exciting.

Though, the possibility of seeing his other friends was more exciting. He loved Hedwig, he wouldn't refute that, but her death wasn't as painful as his other friends.

The sausages had a bit of coat fuzz on them, but he had eaten worse. Hagrid fully woke up not long after the owl had left and he had to explain to him that the owl refused to take payment of the gold and silver coins but happily took five of the copper ones. After having Hagrid explain to him what the coins were and give him an incredibly proud look he was able to produce enough sparks to start a fire in the fireplace, they left for Diagon Alley.

~Z~

The trip to Diagon alley went about the same as he remembered. The biggest difference was that he got his key from Hagrid rather than letting him take it, and he got his wand first, while Hagrid went to get a drink from the Leaky Cauldron. He wasn't surprised that he got his holly wand again, the familiar feeling soothing to him. It had only been a few hours from his perspective since he last held it, but easy access to a majority of his arsenal was relaxing.

He knew Hagrid had the philosopher's stone, so he was planning on stealing it from the friendly giant now that he had the wand. Nothing against Dumbledore, but he wasn't the best at keeping anyone or anything safe. If a trio of determined first years could get access to the stone, then the defenses were lackluster. He had to admit that the intent-based charm on the mirror, however, was a smart play. Still, the Flamel shouldn't have to die because of Dumbledore's mistakes.